Several design questions. Making templates and designing with css.

[wanchman]

I am making my own template for my Joomla site and I am doing so working locally (on my Mac via MAMP). I have come quite a long way, much thanks to the excellent pdf "The Joomla Admin Manual" by Barrie North and I also have the Dreamweaver extension from Media 65, but a lot of questions have popped up along the way...
I am hoping to get some input and practical solutions to these matters and I hope I'm not asking too stupid questions but I have just recently started with CMS as opposed to have been designing static pages for some time so this way of thinking is a bit new to me.
I will try to be clear and structured:

Design – menus
– How do you get the menu to keep certain properties when on a specific "page"
(For example to be bold or underlined to ease navigation, when there are no such thing as a page...)

Design – templates misc
– Different colors (for example) on different parts of the site
(How do you tell Joomla that you are on a specific "page" and therefore menus and boxes should display certain characteristics when there are no such thing as pages?)
– How can you bring all the information needed when exporting a template
(Some styling is connected directly to specific modules in Joomla – how can you get that information when exporting? Can you still style different modules in different ways when you want the template to work on any site?)

Design – forms
– How can you "split" the log-in form?
(If you for example want it horizontally instead of in a side menu)
– How can you change the text in a form field?
– How can you style and change the text surrounding a form field (but still included in the module - like for the log-in)
(I can't find the text in Joomla but it has to be there?)

Modules
– Could you have for example more than one "Banners"-module, or "Random Image"-module? Or can you give other modules the same properties?

Links – internal
– Can you make links to specific "pages"?
If, for example, I wanted a link from the footer directly to the "About us"-page or the "Contact-us"-form

Very grateful for any input/help on these topics! And please, even if you have a suggestion to only one of the above questions – don't hesitate to post it!

/Lisa

[admin]

Design – menus
Q1 – How do you get the menu to keep certain properties when on a specific "page"
(For example to be bold or underlined to ease navigation, when there are no such thing as a page...)

A1: This is controlled via the CSS main menu class active links see
http://www.m65.net/article-pages-joo...51-91.html#1_1
Please note: That it if you’re using third party menu system you would edit there class etc.

Q2: Design – templates misc
– Different colors (for example) on different parts of the site
(How do you tell Joomla that you are on a specific "page" and therefore menus and boxes should display certain characteristics when there are no such thing as pages?)
A2: This is done via Template manager via the Joomla Admin back-end.
You need more than one template.
So make a copy of your template theme and edit the CSS colors etc. rename it to whatever name good name may by the section and color then upload it your Joomla template dir or install via the installer.
Next go into the template manager and assign it to a section.

You can also and this is advanced way doing it is control Joomla modules via conditions which you can do with Joomla Template kit 2.1. Modules condition menu modules can be assigned via sections to show or not show via the module manager in the Joomla back-end . As explained in the Joomla Template kit videos a module is a container that holds data any data menu system, login form etc. it’s assigned a position {ad1} you can set a condition if some module is active or many modules are active then show this module. I can’t go into long explanation of this because I could go on for hours with these tricks Joomla is very flexible. As stated in news forums I will be making more videos to cover topics like this soon I just to finish the Joomla Template 3.0 Build if you think the 1.1.13 Template system was flexible it’s on steroids in Joomla 1.5.
Q2.1:– How can you bring all the information needed when exporting a template
(Some styling is connected directly to specific modules in Joomla – how can you get that information when exporting? Can you still style different modules in different ways when you want the template to work on any site?)
A: Yes it’s also in the video it’s called a class suffix see the Joomla CSS guide
http://www.m65.net/articles-joomla!-knowledgebase-free-guide-to-joomla-css-51.html#1_1
Again there are millions tricks

Now exporting a template how? If mean dev site to live site getting module suffixes edits etc.
No easy way to do this but to dump the Mysql tables for Modules from dev site to Live site Database Or the setup do it my hand ie adding module suffixes.

Q3: Design – forms
– How can you "split" the log-in form?
(If you for example want it horizontally instead of in a side menu)
– How can you change the text in a form field?

A3: This is a two part question not one.
1. Module formatting.
The first Joomla CSS Guide Reference
http://www.m65.net/articles-joomla!-knowledgebase-free-guide-to-joomla-css-51.html#1_1
Covers the form types in Joomla but not enough but it’s a good start the new version for Joomla 1.5 makes easy work of this.

2. Custom login module horizontally Style?
The one way to do this is make a copy of the login via the Module manager. Then edit the html code inside the copied module. Than make it live and turn off the other if you like. Or you could hard code the
Form into the template see auto m65 template. Not the best choice to hard code to template.
Or find a third-party module via the Joomla extension dir
Joomla! Extensions Directory

Q4: – How can you style and change the text surrounding a form field (but still included in the module - like for the log-in)(I can't find the text in Joomla but it has to be there?)
A: This depends on the Module the component etc. no short answer on this there but there generic CSS class’s for forms and if your text is in div tag with an id or class just style the class.
Q5: Modules
– Could you have for example more than one "Banners"-module, or "Random Image"-module? Or can you give other modules the same properties?

A: Yes you answer you own question “-module” Suffix -module2 etc. see CSS

Q6: Links – internal
– Can you make links to specific "pages"?
If, for example, I wanted a link from the footer directly to the "About us"-page or the "Contact-us"-form


A: Yes just a link to the href.

Very grateful for any input/help on these topics! And please, even if you have a suggestion to only one of the above questions – don't hesitate to post it!



These where a ton of questions Answered I going but to coding

I'm not posting a for a few hours

Cheers Brian,
PS. yes I make typos all the time.

[wanchman]

Thank you for answering so fast, and so thoroughly! I will go through your reply and try your suggestions and hopefully make some progress now.

Thanks again,
Lisa